Staff at the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC) were shocked to find out their sexual preferences are listed in their HR profiles after completing what they thought was a confidential survey.

The National Post reported that CBC staff were invited to complete a voluntary “cultural census,” with sexual orientation, religion, and “gender identity” among the topics surveyed.

Subsequently, staff learned that CBC’s human resources department attached their supposedly confidential answers to their personal profiles, which a “select few” higher-ups at the CBC have access to.

“I was taken aback, for sure,” one employee said. “This was just supposed to be purely statistical data, not in any way linked to our profiles.”

“It feels like management tricked us into telling them very personal details in the name of improving diversity,” another employee told the Post.

A spokesperson for the CBC said that no one in HR has access to the data and that only a few people do, but some employees feel they were misled. 

“CBC isn’t being transparent about what they do with this data and where it’s stored,” another anonymous employee said.

“If CBC employees are surprised about seeing how their data is displayed on their own [human resources] tool, then we have a problem.”

“That means that the personal data was not being used within the confines of CBC employees’ consent. That’s a huge problem.”

Last week, the CBC falsely reported that The Counter Signal’s videographer Mocha Bezirgan was killed at the notorious Roxham Road illegal border crossing.

The state broadcaster used a photo capturing Mocha Bezirgan, a Turkish-Canadian documentarian, as he was at the Roxham Road crossing for journalistic purposes. They paired the image of Bezirgan with the headline “Man dies after encountering patrol agents at Canada-U.S. border.”